Category Archives: Poetry

The Iguazu Falls

12 Tuesday Apr 2011

Posted by in Poetry

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The Iguazu Falls are on the border between Brazil and Argentina. The name comes from Gurani and Tupi (native languages of South America) words meaning big water.

Considered to be one of the great wonders of the world, a picture of the falls is also used as the front cover of a new collection of poems from Denny Bradbury. A Denagerie of Poems depicts the falls from a low view point, displaying their striking magnificence.

They consist of a series of 275 waterfalls along a 1.7 mile stretch of the Iguazu River. Most of the Falls are 200 ft in height. The most famous is known as the Devil’s Throat, which is almost 2000 feet by 500 feet and is a U shape.

A yearly drought can leave the Falls short of the life blood that makes it spectacular. It generally only lasts for a few weeks in the summer. But erosion is not a fear for the Falls, as it is many other geological wonders, especially waterfalls. Iguazu’s basalt cliffs have been measured only to recede 3 millimetres a year.

When compared with other Great waterfalls, Niagara and Victoria, the Igazu Falls are actually much wider than both of them. The Niagara Falls, on the border of the United States of America and Canada, is much smaller in terms of size and water volume. At peak time, the Iguazu Falls can have a surface area of 1.3 million square feet of water. Niagara has a comparable area of about 600,000 feet.

The Victoria Falls, situated on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe in Southern Africa, has a massive surface area of 1.8 million square feet of water. They are considered to be the largest continuous waterfall, but the Igazu Falls are actually wider in total. The Victoria Falls are 5,604 feet wide, compared with Igazu’s width of 8,858 ft.

The Falls have been featured in many famous films over the years including the 1979 James Bond film Moonraker. The latest Indian Jones film, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull also features the Iguazu Falls.

A short story at the end of Denny Bradbury’s Denagerie of Poems is described as a mystical journey to the spirit of nature. It came to the author as a silent ballet with the characters  moving to the music in their soul. The Iguazu falls are such a strong symbol of the spirit and power of nature that it forms the perfect cover for the collection.

Sarah Hogan

A look at Thomas Hardy

10 Sunday Apr 2011

Posted by in Fiction, Literacy News, Poetry

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Thomas Hardy was born in Dorset in 1840, and despite not starting school until he was eight years old due to frail health, lived a long and highly creative life until his death aged 87 in 1928.

From an early career as an architect’s assistant, his writings, and in particular his poetry, became the chief focus of his working life. Both were mediums through which he explored his obsession with the darker side of life – passion, emotions, family, poverty and social disapproval, combined with an idealisation of rural life.

A prolific writer, he challenged many of the sexual and religious conventions of the Victorian Age through prose and poetry, depicting class, romance, and the magical that can exist within the minutiae of life whilst also exploring the tragic & self-destructive fates of his characters. Denny Bradbury’s poems within her collection Denagerie of Poems, inspired by Hardy, draw upon the discovery of hope within the darker side of life.

Although the first poems Hardy submitted were rejected by several magazines and his first three novels all sold badly, success arrived with the serialisation of Far From The Madding Crowd in 1874 and whilst 2011 celebrates the 120th anniversary of the publication of one of Hardy’s most
renowned novels, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, his next work, Jude The Obscure, thrust him into a whirl of controversy.

Despite selling over 20,000 copies in three months, reviews declaring it to be an attack upon the institution of marriage meant he turned his back on writing fiction and concentrated solely on poetry, producing several collections, many of which related to his relationship with his wife of thirty
eight years, Emma.

Eight years before he died, Thomas Hardy wrote a poem entitled At Lulworth Cove a Century Back.  Lulworth Cove is a small village in Dorset and is also the setting for Denny Bradbury’s new novel, The Reunion. Both writers, separated apart by centuries, are drawn to this location as a setting for telling a story – Thomas Hardy’s poem commemorates the centenary of the poet John Keats ‘brief visit to Lulworth Cove’ in 1820, who himself wrote his last ever poem there, whilst Denny Bradbury’s The Reunion tells of five friends who meet at Lulworth Cove and take a boat out to sea and into trouble.

Just as in Far From The Madding Crowd where Hardy refers to it as Lulstead Cove and Sergeant Troy drowns just outside it, Denny Bradbury’s novel tells of how the sea which is usually calm in the cove itself is not so calm beyond it.